


The Reveal

by Starlightify



Series: repairing the world [15]
Category: DCU
Genre: ADHD, Alien Biology, Autism, Disabled Character, F/M, Trans Character, neurodivergent character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 12:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7640890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlightify/pseuds/Starlightify
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two years since Clark debuted as Superman, and he's long past due to tell Lois the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reveal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eloquentelegance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquentelegance/gifts).



> eloquentelegance requested Clark and communication issues, and I thought, what better time to have communication issues than when you're trying to tell someone your secret identity?

Clark really, really didn’t mean to let it go on this long.

This is part of the reason, actually, that it took him so long to put on a cape – the fear of what living a double life would do. He’d gotten a taste of it, the times he tried going stealth, the times he tried passing for neurotypical. It’s exhausting to be something – be someone – he’s not. He hides his powers as Clark Kent because he has to. Because he likes his life as Clark Kent, knows he couldn’t keep it if he told the world everything about himself, knows how many people would be at risk if he did. But he can’t stop helping people, so eventually, he followed the lead of the other superheroes who had been popping up for years and got himself a costume. And then it all got very complicated, very fast.

Now, two years after Superman showed up, Clark is going to make things a little less complicated.

In the past twenty-four hours, he’s been thrown through some (thankfully empty) buildings, shot with Kryptonite shards, and beaten until even his invulnerable skin couldn’t protect him from deep muscular bruising. He is, to put it lightly, not at his best, and should probably not be making important decisions in this state.

Oh, well.

“Jesus Christ, Clark!” Lois yelps when Clark answers the door. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Bricks, mostly,” Clark says. “Uh, come in?”

“Have you been to the hospital?” Lois demands, pushing past him and setting her purse on the table. Probably to get at her first-aid kit. Lois is frighteningly well prepared, and Clark has considered getting her a utility belt several times. She doesn’t seem very fond of belts, though. And given the amount of times she’s hit someone with her purse, Clark’s inclined to think that she likes it as a weapon as much as she likes it as a carrying case.

Lois has bandaids and antibiotic ointment in her hand. “Get over here and sit down,” she says, gesturing to the couch. “Honestly, Clark, it’s the weekend, what were you doing?”

“Fighting Metallo,” he says.

“Ha ha,” Lois says.

“No, I mean it!” he says. He didn’t script for this. He tried, but he couldn’t even begin to anticipate her responses. Would she be angry? Sad? Confused? All three? In what proportion? So, for lack of a better option, he decided to wing it, which is clearly going just spectacularly. He’s not nonverbal, but his verbal capacities are operating at maybe 60%. And Lois, as always, is talking so fast he can’t quite process all her words as they happen.

“Clark, sit down. You didn’t answer my first question, so I’m going to guess that’s a ‘no’ on the hospital. I’m driving you there as soon as I fix that split in your eyebrow.”

His – oh. Is that why his face feels unevenly warm? Clark raises a hand, and his fingers come back bloody. Whoops.

“Don’t touch it, you damn meathead. Your fingers are filthy. Sit. Down.” Lois is digging for something else in her purse. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re concussed, you’re even less cooperative than usual.”

“I’m always cooperative,” Clark says. No. He is getting off-topic. Distracted. He needs to tell her – “Lois, I have something important to tell you,” he says. And sits on the couch so she won’t give him a Look.

“It can wait,” she says, and pulls a flashlight out of her purse.

Oh.

Oh no.

Kryptonians, as far as Clark has figured out from the information his birth parents left him and his own experiences, were nocturnal. There are things about his physiology and physical capabilities that are apparently traits of all Kryptonians, not just Kryptonians under a yellow sun. Like the glowing. He bioluminesces in red, yellow, and blue, both deliberately and… not deliberately, sometimes. The glow isn’t bright enough to be seen under daylight conditions, which is a very good thing. Otherwise, Clark Kent would be revealed as nonhuman the second someone started teasing him. He doesn’t know why his glow reflex is apparently wired into his blush reflex, he just knows that it’s terrible.

The other big thing about his physiology, the thing that’s about to be a problem, is that his pupils have a distinctly catlike range of dilation and contraction, and that they reflect light in the way that inspired a thousand lolcats about ‘lazer vision’. Lois is going to notice, he has to tell her, he didn’t want her to find out by mistake –

Lois shines the flashlight in his eyes. He hears her heartrate speed up. “Well, you don’t seem concussed, so you can’t use that as an excuse,” she says.

That’s it?

She has to have noticed. Even if the angle wasn’t right for eyeshine, he knows how small his pupils get in direct, strong light. They slit, too. It’s not – he’s not – she’s –

“I’m Superman,” he blurts.

“Cute. Just because you’re not concussed doesn’t mean you’re invincible.” Lois shakes her head. “You have a super-thick skull, that’s for sure. But then, I’ve known that for years.”

“No, I mean, I’m –” Clark gives up on words and hovers off the couch. He hears Lois’s heartrate speed again, resists the urge to look into her skull and decode the electrical impulses going through her brain. That’s invading her privacy. He’s done enough to disrespect her already, keeping up a charade like this. She deserves so much better than he’s given her, bad excuses and worse lies and –

“If I’d known it would take Metallo throwing you through a building for you to tell me, I’d have broken him out of jail myself,” Lois says.

Clark drops back onto the couch with a heavy thud.

“Now, is this going to kill you, or can I clean up your eyebrow?” Lois asks, brandishing the tube of antibiotic ointment at him.

“I – I – I –” Clark stammers, stuck on that vowel. He switches tactics, tries for sounds that he can usually get out easier when his stammer starts tripping him up. “Y-you knew?”

“Yeah. I knew.” Lois puts the antibiotic ointment back down on the coffee table, continues to rummage in her purse. “Actually, let’s clean that blood off before I start trying to bandage it.”

Alcohol swabs.

She has alcohol swabs.

Clark swallows.

“Will any of this kill you?” she asks.

“N-no,” Clark squeaks. Alcohol swabs wielded by Lois Lane, who has known for goodness-knows-how-long that he’s been lying to her. This is going to hurt. He deserves it.

Lois rips open the package and extracts a tiny square. The smell of rubbing alcohol stings Clark’s nose. “Hold still,” Lois says, and reaches for his face. Clark screws his eyes shut and tries not to clench his teeth. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he manages to fracture a molar.

The dabs of the wipe on his skin are… surprisingly gentle. Lois avoids the cut itself until the very end, and then only gives it a few swipes. It hurts, but no more than alcohol in an open wound usually does. Clark opens his eyes and finds Lois staring steadily back at him.

“Did you really expect me to take advantage of an injury you got from saving people?” she asks. Clark recognizes that tone. That is a hurt tone. That is not a tone he wants to inspire in anyone, let alone Lois.

“No! I just, I thought, I –” Verbal abilities at 55%. Great. “Are you mad at me?” he says.

“I was, when I found out. I still might be. I don’t know.” Lois reaches for the antibiotic ointment, starts dabbing it onto the cut in his eyebrow. He heals fast, but not as fast as people seem to think, and the kryptonite exposure is slowing him down even more. Cleaning the wound is probably a good thing, even if he’s never found any Earth pathogen that can figure out how to infect his Kryptonian body. First time for everything, right? “But I’m not going to take advantage of you being hurt, Clark, what kind of person do you think I am?”

Clark sighs. “I’m messing this up. I know you wouldn’t hurt me. I just, just, I think you should be able to, if you want to.”

“Clark.” Lois sounds very serious now. “The only time anyone should be allowed to hurt you is if you really want them to, you’ve both negotiated it, and there’s a safeword.”

Clark is torn between being touched and being absolutely mortified. He can feel his face flushing. At least it’s daylight, so even though he keeps his apartment dimly lit, the light from outside will cover the glowing. Small favors.

“Clark, hey. You don’t have to look at me, but I need to know you’re listening. Are you listening?”

Clark nods.

“Okay.” He hears Lois inhale deeply. “When I first realized you’re Superman, I was angry, because I thought you’d been laughing at me all this time. Lois Lane, investigative reporter, fooled by a pair of glasses and a slouch.”

“It’s more than that,” Clark says. “I change my voice and I –”

“Bup bup bup! Let me finish.” Clark closes his mouth. “Thank you. I thought you were laughing at me, because I have spent my life surrounded by people who think that they can, in some way, expose me as a fraud who couldn’t investigate her way out of a paper bag. People have wanted to see me tricked and laid low for years, Clark. It hurt me to think you were one of them. But then I thought about it, and I realized that you _aren’t_ one of them. Right?” Lois pauses, then says “You can answer the question.”

“Lois, gosh, no, I didn’t even – I would never – I –” Clark feels his eyes start to prickle. He hadn’t even thought of that. He should have. He’s seen enough vitriol thrown Lois’s way, enough people question and mock and challenge her capabilities because she’s a woman, because she’s trans, because she’s Chinese-American, because she’s neurodivergent, because of some combination thereof. He’s seen it and he hadn’t considered how that might make her feel, when she found out he’d been keeping a secret like this.

“I know, Clark. Because whether you’re in tights or in one of your awful suits, you’re a genuinely good guy. Your heart’s the same.” Lois pauses. “Your metaphorical heart. I have no idea how Kryptonian circulatory systems work.”

Clark shrugs. “I’m fuzzy on the details, but I have a heart-like organ, at least. Around the same place. A little more centered and down, though, sort of like a Vulcan.”

Lois looks at him, then bursts into laughter. “Clark Kent, you incorrigible nerd,” she says.

He smiles at her. This is happening. She knows. She doesn’t hate him. This is going better than – why does something taste metallic?

“Shit, Clark, your lip!”

Oh. Right. He’d forgotten about that. Lois hastily dabs antibiotic ointment onto the split in his lip and wow, her fingers are really soft and nice and calm down Clark, seriously, not the time.

“You’re such a disaster,” Lois says. She still has laughter on her face, in the lines of her lips and the shine of her eyes. “I should have figured it out sooner. You’re a damn mess no matter what you dress like.”

“Keep that on the down low,” Clark says. “I’ve managed to fool a lot of people into thinking I know what I’m doing.”

Lois shakes her head. “You don’t, but you also do, somehow. I don’t know.” Then she throws her arms around him and they’re hugging now, that’s neat. That’s cool. He likes this. He can smell her makeup and her shampoo, and the chemical scents may bug him but it’s worth it to be close to her. Truly. Lois doesn’t hate him.

“Thank you for telling me,” she says, and pulls back. “Like I said, after I got done being mad, I thought about it more. I know you’re not a jerk. So you had to have other reasons for not telling me, and I decided to respect that until you _were_ ready to tell me.”

This time, Clark hugs her. Amazing, brilliant Lois Lane, who stunned him with her articles before he even met her in person, who was half his reason for even trying to get a job at the Daily Planet, who helped him get his bearings in Metropolis and rolls her eyes at his bad jokes and is the best friend he’s ever had. “You’re amazing,” he whispers. The tears that started building earlier are spilling out now, dribbling over his cheeks and lips and leaving wet circles on Lois’s shirt.

“Hey, Smallville. It’s okay.” She pats his back. Clark enjoys the closeness for a little while longer before pulling away reluctantly. He’s kind of a messy crier and if he gets snot on Lois he will probably expire on the spot. “So. I take it the hospital is out of the question?”

Clark nods. “I x-rayed myself. Nothing’s broken, just bruises and scrapes. Those should clear up in a few days.”

“Do you have an ice pack?” Lois asks.

“I usually just use frozen peas,” he admits.

“You do live in the city now, Clark. We have modern conveniences.” Lois stands, then stops. “Wait a minute. Superman – you as Superman – you said you don’t eat. But your desk at work is mostly snacks. What gives?”

Clark blushes. Again. “I, uh. The food allergies. I didn’t want people to know that my invulnerability is really conditional, that they could skip the Kryptonite and just force-feed me ice cream. But people kept trying to give me all this homemade food, and I didn’t know how to turn them down without looking like some kind of snobby jerk, so I just said I don’t eat.”

Lois snorts, covers her mouth, and then loses the battle and starts giggling. “You… you are so _pure_ ,” she says. “What the hell, Clark. You are going to make some nice person really, really confused some day.”

 _I was sort of hoping I could confuse you,_ Clark doesn’t say, because he’s not going to get into that right now, and also because that’s a really weird way to tell someone you like them like them. He settles for shrugging instead, then winces when the motion pulls on at least two different bruises.

“Right. Frozen peas. Then more questions.” Lois turns, stops again, turns back. “And there will be questions, Clark, even if this is one interview I’ll never publish.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Clark says.

~x~

Lois Lane’s mental notes from the not-interview with SuperClark KentMan

\- Food allergies are for real, which is good to know, because I would seriously worry about anyone who subjected themselves to gluten-free bread for the sake of a disguise  
\- Parents are real and not paid actors  
\- Glasses disguise the eye things (pupils like a cat’s!)  
\- Chose me to do Superman interviews because he trusted my journalistic integrity (!!!)  
\- Significantly less invulnerable than public believes  
\- Says he wants me to do publicity for the Justice League when they get more organized (!!!!!)  
\- Looks weirdly cute when he cries (I knew this already)  
\- Uses frozen peas to ice his bruises like some kind of pre-modern bumpkin  
\- Says he’ll take me flying in a non life-or-death situation sometime  
\- Is a total goober, superpowers or no superpowers


End file.
